CHAD CABLE

CHAD CABLE

Stack Rabbit

Lead Gameplay ProgrammerDisney Interactive, 2013

iOS (Discontinued)

Android (Discontinued)

Overview

In Stack Rabbit, players swipe, steal, and stack their way to victory! Stack Rabbit is a Match 3, but one where the player is actually a character on the game board. This game was a lot of firsts for us - our first production-quality Unity game, our first 3D game, and our first free-to-play game (i.e. there were plenty of learnings).

Contributions

Green Light Prototype

The original prototype started with the idea of putting a character in a Match 3 game. The first prototype was inspired by Bejewled Blitz, so the game trended Arcadey with rounds lasting 60 seconds. After the initial concept, I took over the prototyped to flesh out the core toy and iterate on feedback.

Controls

A single mis-swipe in Stack Rabbit could mean failure - potentially costing players real life dollars! The challenge came from supporting the cardinal directions and the grid's slightly offset direction. Case 1: the swipe lines up within a cone of the average directions - fire the event! Case 2: if the swipe enters now widened cones - fire the event. Case 3: the swipe is indeterminate - hop in place.

Gameplay Mechanics

The game runs on top of a simple but flexible grid system. Each obstacle needed a few rules defined, which helped us integrate and iterate on new ideas faster. It also freed the designers of extra constraints: the system could support any configuration in both logic and art generation.

Objective UI

Because game play objectives change on a level by level basis, the in-game UI does most of the heavy lifting. Each objective type had a unique UI and animation to best explain the rules. The UI animates using springs to feel more physical - an important feeling since the game world and UI frequently interact.